And another raven ACEO
This is based partly on my memory of the Keiraville rooftops that were in my Cockatoo ACEO for lilcrabbygal, since I loved that setting. But also on a Derwent wallpaper that had a dawn scene with soft warm bright colors in the distance and blued dark silhouetted buildings... this and the sunset one were influenced by that which I think was a Tinted Charcoals demo.
All seven of the raven ACEOs have bids, a couple of them have multiple bids. There is a ravens craze going on at eBay, and I'm enjoying doing them because ravens really are one of my favorite birds. They were a little bit intimidating at first, because they're black and I didn't have good references. But I was studying all this fantastic art that I saw every day and got swept into it just like the Frost thing.
Mermaids are still strong too, so are cats. A lot of artists are doing good realistic cat drawings, which may be one reason I'm not doing super realistic cat drawings. I could do my best with it and still wind up being one among many realistic cat artists, even for big cats -- the tigers show up now and then too, which is good for me as a collector.
So marketing is a matter of matching the menu of "Things I like to draw" with "Things collectors like to buy." I've gone off doing the florals, but I spent years doing lots of florals. Florals aren't really selling versus landscapes or ravens or mermaids. I might do a cat or two sometime, or maybe combine a black cat with a raven and really get into black textures as I've seen some artists do.
But at the moment I'm also putting together a raven ACEO in my mind that'd be scratchboard, but very very detailed -- do the feather structures, get very strong values in there, then mute them with the Claybord Inks. I haven't done colored scratchboard yet. I love the white but I'm still exploring the new medium gradually. I've also got a request from one ebayer who liked my kestrel but didn't win the set, to do another kestrel "maybe in scratchboard?"
I would love to do that one in full color because the male American Kestrel was the brightest of all my Raptors. It's a perfect candidate for perfectly shaped feather structures, for coloring in with inks, for detailing and then doing something interesting yet vague with the background so the bird pops out. Maybe even clearing off the background to white and washing over it with mixed greens for foliage, put the kestrel in the woods for a red, blue, green color harmony.
I'm getting excited about the colored pencils book too. I need to do that *soon.* I need to get the last Big Sets for my Master Sets -- early in the year. And then pick a time and plow into doing the writing as if I was doing a novel. Just go "Okay, now I am doing the book." And write, write, write. Edit, edit, edit. Slam it out. Not picking on it back and forth but just push it to the top of my desk and do the dang thing -- and hang credentials. Good drawings and good easy to understand clear writing that can actually help beginners GET some of the esoteric things involved may sell it.
I am very, very good at getting beginners to draw well. I've seen the results of my ehow articles, what real beginners have gotten from my articles. They rock. They get it. Things they weren't doing, they add that to their repertory. So, I am ready to do that book and I am ready to have that kind of income and life too -- and maybe once I sell that, doing art sales on eBay will turn into something else -- side money, mad money, the thing I do when I want to just get fun stuff.